Month: February 2019

US President Donald Trump says “100%” of the Islamic State group’s territory has now been taken over, even though local commanders with the US allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), maintain total victory will be declared within a week.

As the battle draws to a close, the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville met some of those leaving the group’s last stronghold, Baghouz.

Hamza Jasim al-Ali’s world is small and terrible. He hasn’t moved far in life, living always along the same 40km (25 mile) stretch on the banks of the Euphrates.

His journey, still without end, took him from al-Qaim in Iraq, across the border to Syria and into the dark centre of what was the Islamic State group’s nightmare caliphate. He has seen more of life and death than any child of 12 should.

Now he is far from his river, sitting on the desert floor in a wind-whipped tent, alone – apart from an elderly woman, who barely knows him. His leg is broken, but healing, and he smiles as I ask him questions.

“It was good,” he says, smiling again. “Less food and water and a lot of fighting. It was heaving fighting.”

Does he still like IS? “No. Why would I like them after all they have done?” he answers.

Hamza is an IS orphan. His father joined the group and took the whole family with him. He died five months ago, along with Hamza’s mother and brothers and sisters in an air strike that was part of the battle to drive the group from their last toehold of territory in Syria.

IS’s victims number millions – they displaced and terrorised people across Iraq, Syria and Libya. Their treatment of the Yazidis was genocidal, according to the United Nations. But they also brutalised and corrupted not just their enemies, but their own children, too.

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Women and children are sent to displacement camps

As part of a ceasefire deal, more than 6,000 women and children have left IS territory, along with injured male fighters. The Islamic State group’s dreams of a sprawling caliphate have been reduced to a pathetic encampment around the village of Baghouz. Their first stop when they get out is the open desert, where thousands are processed in the open. The air is acrid and filthy, many of them are sick. They defecate out in the open.

Most are then moved on to an overwhelmed internment camp near the city of Hassaka, in the village of al-Hawl. As Hamza and I speak, there’s a lull outside – the day’s IS refugees have yet to arrive, and last night’s have already been put on to cattle trucks for the long journey across desert roads to al-Hawl.

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Some have fled with suitcases containing the last of their belongings

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Monitors say thousands have been evacuated out in recent weeks

They are searched individually, by Kurdish women fighters, but it is not known if they are finger-printed or photographed. The injured men’s pictures and other biometric data is taken before they are sent to detention. But there are limits to the investigations that can be carried out into the crimes they are suspected of. It is not clear how long the Kurdish authorities can hold them. Some of the men said they expected to be freed in a few months’ time.

One man, who said he was from Aleppo, claimed he was a caretaker. At the edge of the processing area, he told me: “I’ll do the supposed detention time and then go live with my parents and leave everything behind me. I’ll go live with my mum, that’ll be best.”

Another, Abu Bakr al-Ansari, showed little regret. “All Muslims will be sad it’s gone because they wanted their own state,” he says. “They won’t live free to practise their religion in other Muslim countries.”

Both were then taken away to Kurdish detention.

Across the desert plain, I find discarded belongings. Mobile phones that have been smashed or burned in camp fires, USB drives snapped in two.

There are photographs in the dirt, too – one of four young girl scouts, another of a girl wearing a headscarf. Was one of them now on their way to al-Hawl camp?

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Personal belongings could be seen among scattered debris

Amid the soiled nappies and empty tinned cans of food, a family ration card. It belongs to a Kosovan family. The father had a senior position within IS. But that’s another story.

In this mess of abandonment, there is purpose and care. A computer hard drive has been stamped on and covered in human excrement.

Many of the women left IS not because they wanted to, but because they were ordered to. Plenty still carried their husbands’ worn military backpacks.

It appears that they want their enemies – the Kurds and the Western coalition – to have little clue to who they are. I met women from Turkey, Iraq, Chechnya, Russia and Dagestan. Some expected to be reunited with their husbands who are still inside Baghouz, waiting for the final battle. Many are still fanatics.

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What to do with foreign fighters and their children has sparked fierce debate

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Many of the women’s husbands remained inside the Baghouz hideout

A Tunisian-Canadian woman, her niqab streaked with stains under purple framed glasses, gave her name as Umm Yousef. Her husband, a Moroccan, had been killed, but she may have married another who was still inside. She said she had no regrets and had learned much from IS.

“So Allah, he made this to test us,” she told me. “Without food, without money and without houses, but now I’m happy, because maybe some time, in two hours’ I will see that I have water to drink.”

Britain and other coalition countries are maintaining pressure on the Kurds to keep the dispossessed of IS locked up. But after the misery the extremists brought here, the Kurds want them gone.

At night more women arrived. Some of their children cried, but others stood silent and still, numb to everything around them. When they were asked a question, in the glare of television camera lights, they turned their dust covered faces down to the ground and said nothing.

A group that showed almost no mercy, now pleads for it.

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Media captionExclusive pictures of final Islamic State group bastion

An Iraqi woman, standing in the dark, with around 200 other women and children, said to me: “Do you not see the children here before you? Can you not feel their pain? The pain of old men and the women who got shredded by the bombs? The children who died in air strikes? You’re human. We’re human as well. Do you not feel my pain, brother?”

At the edge of the throng, there is a medical station, run by a charity, the Free Burma Rangers. Paul Brady, a Californian, is one of their medics. He says the injuries have changed as more people have arrived from IS.

“About 10 days ago we saw quite a few with what looked like bullet wounds,” he told me.

“They said they were shot because they were escaping. But now we haven’t been seeing as many of those. It feels like most of these injuries are a little older, mostly from air strikes and mortars.

“You walk around this triage spot and it smells really bad because these wounds have been festering for a long time,” he said.

The flow of people will eventually dry up, and then the final battle for Baghouz is expected. Those we spoke to in the desert said there were still thousands of fighters still inside.

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One injured fighter told us he got out because “there’s no Islamic State left”

Hamza was injured five weeks ago when he stepped on a landmine, but he says his broken leg is much better now. As I’m about to leave, he looks up at me, his smile finally disappearing from his face and he asks, “What will happen to me?”

There’s no clear answer. And I couldn’t tell him that Iraq may not take him back. He would probably be taken to al-Hawl camp like everyone else.

I left him something to drink, some chocolate and bananas, in the care of the medics and the Kurdish forces.

Returning to the desert the next day, he was gone, his place on the floor taken by more sick and injured from the last of the so-called caliphate.

Great Britain had to settle for silver in the men’s and women’s team pursuit at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Pruszkow, Poland.

Australia finished in three minutes 48.012 seconds to smash the world record in the men’s event.

That lowered their record of 3:49.804 set at the Commonwealth Games in 2018.

In the women’s team pursuit, four-time Olympic champion Laura Kenny helped Britain to silver as Australia triumphed by 0.204 secs.

‘We can give them a run at the big one’

Britain shaved more than two-and-a-half seconds off the time that saw them take gold in the men’s event in Apeldoorm in 2018.

But despite being defending champions, three-time Olympic gold medallist Ed Clancy and teammates Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Hayter and Kian Emadi were unable to match the blistering speed of the Australian team.

Leigh Howard, Sam Welsford, Kelland O’Brien and Alex Porter, gained and then stretched their early advantage and now look likely to be Britain’s main competition for gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

GB take silver as Australia smash team pursuit world record

“We actually rode pretty well, we were only a couple of tenths shy of what we did in Rio with our full Olympic package, but that’s just an indication of how good the Australian ride was,” said Clancy.

“I sound like a broken record but you’re only going to get our best performance at an Olympics for a number of reasons. We can’t be complacent, we have to stay close and keep pushing them.

“We’re all disappointed to have given up our world title but if we can keep moving forward like we are doing then we can give them a run at the big one.”

‘I’ve let the girls down’

In the women’s race, an Australian quartet of Ashlee Ankudinoff, Georgia Baker, Amy Cure and Annette Edmondson pulled almost a second clear before being reeled in during the final two laps.

But they hung on to win by a little over two tenths of a second with Kenny – part of a team featuring Elinor Barker, Katie Archibald and Eleanor Dickinson – assuming responsibility for Britain’s silver medal.

“I feel I’ve let the girls down, I haven’t had the best legs the last couple of days and I feel a lot of responsibility for the times we’ve been doing,” she said.

“I didn’t pull nearly the turn lengths I was doing at home so I’m disappointed for that. It’s just disappointing on the day.”

Denmark claimed the bronze medal in the men’s at the expense of Canada, while New Zealand took bronze in the women’s race.

Laura Kenny has now won 14 medals at the Track Cycling World Championships since 2011.

Analysis

Chris Boardman, former Olympic cycling champion and BBC summariser

We’ve never seen anything like that Australian performance in the men’s team pursuit before.

It is quite a blow to the British quartet to be three tenths of a second off the fastest time a British team has ever done and still be well beaten.

It is not a drubbing though and they are still in good shape for the Olympics.

Britain’s Jack Carlin won silver medals in the sprint and team sprint in 2018

Britain’s Jack Carlin followed up on his promising performances in the World Cup event in London in December to finish fifth in the final of the men’s keirin,

The 21-year-old advanced from a star-studded field – containing Australia’s Matt Glaetzer – in the second round and was again on the sprint champion’s wheel going into the penultimate lap of the final.

But Netherlands rider Matthijs Buchli mounted a devastating attack to take gold as Carlin got boxed in on the inside.

Japan’s Yudai Nitta took the silver and Germany’s Stefan Botticher took the bronze.

There was also a strong performance from Britain’s Matt Walls in the men’s scratch race.

The 20-year-old featured near the front of the field for the majority of the 15km distance and finished in sixth in a race won by Australia’s Welsford.

It was a disappointing day for Olympic bronze medallist Katy Marchant who went out in the last 16 in the women’s individual sprint.

The 26-year-old was beaten by Germany’s Lea Sophie Friedrich to miss out on a place in the quarter-finals.

“It’s a shame but this season has been a funny one for me,” Marchant said. “I’ve sacrificed a lot of individual preparation. To go to all six world cups, it’s taken its toll.”

NASA has awarded a contract to Praetorian Standard Inc., of Fayetteville, North Carolina, a service disabled veteran-owned small business, to provide comprehensive security services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, as well as facilities managed by Johnson.

Jackson had groomed him to believe they “loved each other – and this is how we show our love”, he said.

“And then he would immediately follow that up with, ‘But If anybody else ever found out what we are doing, you and I would go to jail for the rest of our lives and our lives would fall apart,’ he and I would fall apart,” Mr Robson told the programme.

“All of this was terrifying to me.

“The idea of being pulled away from Michael – this man, this other-worldly figure, this god to me who had now become my best friend – no way was I going to do anything that would pull me away from him.”

Mr Robson said Jackson had told him “I was his best friend and the only person he had ever done these sexual acts with”.

“So therefore I was – out of all the boys in the world – the chosen one, I thought,” he said.

Mr Safechuck told the programme his abuse had begun with Jackson teaching him how to perform a sex act, at the age of 10.

“Then you start French kissing – he said I taught him how to do that,” Mr Safechuck said.

And this had been followed by further abuse and other sex acts.

Find out more

Watch the Victoria Derbyshire programme’s full interview with Wade Robson and James Safechuck from 10:00 GMT on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel in the UK.

Mr Safechuck told the programme Jackson had been able to abuse him over such a sustained period of time because he had also successfully groomed his parents.

“There’s a long grooming process where Michael inserts himself into your family and becomes a part of your family,” he said.

“It takes him a while to build up the trust – it doesn’t happen overnight.”

And he then “makes a wedge between you and your parents – and he isolates you from everybody else”.

‘Master manipulator’

“At the same time when you’re being abused, a part of you is dying,” Mr Safechuck added.

Mr Robson also described Jackson as a “master manipulator”.

He had driven “this wedge between myself and my father, [and] my mother and my father” to make it easier for the abuse to occur, he told the programme.

He also said part of the responsibility for the abuse should fall “at the door of all the other people, all the other employees that were around Michael and me and James [Safechuck] all the time, who looked the other way”.

Image copyrightGetty Images

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Fans turned the entrance to Neverland into a shrine after the singer died

‘Very innocent’

In response, Michael Jackson’s brothers Tito, Marlon and Jackie, and nephew Taj Jackson rejected the claims in Leaving Neverland – which is broadcast in the UK next week – that the singer had abused children.

Taj said his uncle’s behaviour had seemed odd to some but had been “very innocent”, adding: “His naivety was his downfall.”

And Marlon said there was “not one piece of evidence” to back up the allegations.

Michael Jackson’s estate, meanwhile said Mr Robson and Mr Safechuck had previously “testified under oath that these events never occurred”.

“They have provided no independent evidence and absolutely no proof in support of their accusations, which means the entire film hinges solely on the word of two perjurers,” it said.

President Donald Trump’s former lawyer has made a series of allegations about his former boss. Politically embarrassing, yes. But how much legal jeopardy? Jonathan Turley, professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, gives his view.

“Let me… introduce myself.”

Those words by Michael Cohen may have been the least needed portion of his testimony. He is truly a man who needs no introduction.

What he needs is a reputation. Well, a good reputation anyway.

Trump’s fixer was appearing less than 24 hours after being disbarred as a lawyer and a few weeks before he goes to jail for three years.

So, let’s look at the messenger

While Cohen tried to portray himself as the redemptive sinner, few who knew Cohen bought the act. Cohen is a serial liar and thug-for-hire whose lack of legal skill was only surpassed by his lack of legal ethics.

His testimony seemed to flail madly in every direction. He called Trump “a racist”, “a conman,” and “a cheat”.

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Media captionFive things Cohen said about Trump

He was eager to recount how Trump lied about bone spurs to get out of Vietnam. He then reminded everyone that Trump attacked a real war hero, John McCain, for getting captured. He worked in how Trump got him to lie to the First Lady about his affairs.

It was riveting but largely irrelevant to the criminal allegations.

The Republicans and the White House worked hard to establish the obvious – that Cohen is a convicted perjurer and con man.

The evidence

Cohen is no daisy but he can still be a danger. He brought documents, including cheques signed by Trump, to bolster his claims of a pattern of criminal and dishonest practices.

Virtually all of these allegations were far removed from the collusion allegations that led to the special counsel investigation and concerned Trump’s businesses.

Most of the examples that Cohen gave of Trump lying about his affairs or wealth or dealings were gratuitous and immaterial to criminal charges.

It is not a crime to lie to the public or the media. If it were, most of the members of the committee would be serving time next to Trump.

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Huge interest in Cohen’s testimony but how damaging was it?

The WikiLeaks connection

One disclosure described as a “bombshell” was Cohen recounting that he heard Trump confidante Roger Stone tell Trump over the phone that he had spoken to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that WikiLeaks was about to dump a massive number of hacked emails related to Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

Stone and WikiLeaks deny this account. However, the real problem is the date. Cohen said that this occurred just before the Democratic National Convention. That would put the call from mid- to late July 2016. However, WikiLeaks was already known to have the emails and was publicly teasing their release at least a month before.

Moreover, there is nothing criminal in Stone or Trump wanting to see the emails or relishing their release. Cohen’s account of Trump’s delight at the news is hardly surprising – he publicly called on the Russians to release any hacked emails.

Moreover, Trump was not the only one seeking dirt from foreign sources. While the campaign falsely denied funding the controversial “Steele dossier”, Clinton’s campaign later admitted that it paid a former British spy to gather information on Trump from foreign sources, including Russian intelligence.

Indeed, Cohen expressly said that he had no evidence of collusion with the Russians.

The hush money

Cohen also repeated his allegation that Trump encouraged him to arrange for the payment of hush money to a Playboy model and a porn star to bury news of his affairs.

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Cohen admitted his payments to these women broke the law, but convictions for campaign finance violations are rare

Cohen showed up bearing cheques with Trump’s signature – signed when he was president and still denying prior knowledge of the payments.

This could amount to a campaign finance violation, but such violations are rarely charged as criminal matters and have had mixed success in prosecutions.

The inflated assets

Where Cohen may have caused new problems for Trump was his accounting of dishonest business practices from using his charity to pay portraits of himself for his own benefit or misrepresenting assets in communications with insurance companies and banks.

This included a curious series of asset reports that Cohen said were given to Deutsche Bank in a move to acquire the Buffalo Bills NFL team.

Trump’s stated value seemed to jump from $4.56bn in 2012 to $8.66bn in 2013.

It is not clear what that asset increase was based on and whether the figures were put into any formal loan documents. However, any misrepresentation of wealth and liabilities can form the basis of bank fraud allegations.

What is clear is that Trump is looking at a growing threat not from the special counsel’s investigation into Russian collusion, but the investigation into his business practices by the US Attorney in the Southern District of New York.

And attacking Cohen’s lack of credibility will not change bank records.

From Cohn to Cohen

Trump has been quoted about his respect for Roy Cohn, who was the right-hand man to Joe McCarthy during the “Red Scare” period. He was widely viewed as an unethical and vile human being. He was also Trump’s lawyer.

In March 2016, Trump reportedly asked in frustration: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” That man would prove to be Michael Cohen who had the same sense of freedom from rules of ethics or law.

Like Cohn, Cohen was known to threaten and bully people into submission. Like Cohn, Cohen would be disbarred for his unethical acts.

Image copyrightGetty Images

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Roy Cohn with Trump in 1983

Many believe that Cohn was the person who taught Trump to never admit fault and always counterpunch. Cohn once said: “I bring out the worst in my enemies and that’s how I get them to defeat themselves.”

In the end, Cohn died a disbarred lawyer being pursued by the IRS for millions. Cohen is now a disbarred lawyer who is going to prison for, among other things, five counts of tax evasion.

Of course, Trump has no need to ask “where’s my Michael Cohen” in the coming months. He will be in the federal penitentiary.

And the I-word

After the hearing in the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Chairman Elijah Cummings stated that he now believes that Trump not only committed crimes but “it appears that [Trump] did” commit crimes in office.

If true, Trump may be not only looking at a political push for impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.

But criminal charges after he leaves office.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and served as the last lead defence counsel in an impeachment in the US Senate